Fediverse

Here are some more specific examples to think about!

• Compliment people's art and ask about their process

• Teach people about something you're knowledgeable on

• Give constructive criticism on peoples projects when it's welcome

• Thank people for posting things you're glad you got to see, tell them you enjoyed it

• Tell people you're glad they're here

• Tell people you hope they have a good day

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts :) if you have thoughts of your own, I'd love to hear them!

There was a movement in the blogging community ~15 years ago to leave positive comments on posts you like. It was an approach to conquer negative comments and a general destructive nature of online conversations. I still do it to this day. If I really like something or appreciate someone's work, I leave a nice comment.

I've noticed most discussions i have here end with a LOT less anger and a LOT more learning and that makes me happy.

I disagree with your premise.

It should be "The best thing that you can do for humanity is to be kind".

Seriously. We're living in a time when fascism is in an upswing and at least one religious leader has publicly called empathy a sin. Kindness and empathy are rebellious acts.

Great post.

To add to this, not resorting to calling others tankies or Russian bots when you have differing opinions, especially around politics.

The second best thing is remember that tolerance of intolerance breeds intolerance.

I disagree, yes being kind is very important but even more important is people engaging and upvoting comments.

Reddit was great because of what happened in the comment section, not the headliners, and I see very little voting engagement even in active posts.

Remember, it's free to do and it encourages others to engage as well. But yea be kind too

I have a couple of suggestions to add:

I was considering leaving the other site before the API fiasco because it felt like so many users approach engagement as rhetorical combat, that is, the point of discussion is to defeat the other person. Instead, think one of Covey's habits of highly-effective people: "Win-win, or no deal." Approach discussion on the Fediverse as a collaborative act, in which you're exchanging ideas with another person. Even if you disagree, you can both win by respectfully hearing out the other person. And if the other person won't collaborate? No deal! Just disengage.

Just like in intimate relationship, use "I" statements instead of "you" statements. Telling people who they are and what they believe is not only disrespectful, but probably wrong, often exaggerated or distorted for rhetorical combat purposes. People get angry when their identity gets poked at. One exception, of course, is when giving advice, like, stick to what you know, and share your thoughts and your reactions to a topic.

I'll add: "be supportive and helpful if you can, and just shut up if you can't".

Fediverse is sometimes suffering from the same kind of people that Linux has - "oh you have a problem? Well, here's the GitHub repo and a project Wiki, figure it out".

Most people know this in some capacity, but it's not talked about enough: the shape of the platform massively shapes its culture. Every mechanism, intentional feature or not, is a factor in resulting user behavior and should be accounted for.

Reddit Karma was (shitty) reputation from the start, but Slashdot user IDs became one despite being mere sequential identifiers; negative user feedback such as downvotes can be harmful to communities (yet, users without an outlet may lash out in other ways e.g. reports); even how the platform communicates with users influences them; and so on.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be nice and incentivize others to do the same, but unless the system naturally leads to the desired behavior, you'll have a bad time in the long term because building culture by interactions doesn't scale. By the time you realize there's a shift, it's too late; interactions will compound and affect how the average user acts faster than you can try to course-correct.

I wish lemmy was more experimental, because by building a clone of reddit, we've copied too many of its faults. We've already got gatherings to complain about mods, and the one time devs considered changing a core component, discussion was killed by an onslaught of users. Problems with the current setup that were brought up then will likely never see that amount of people thinking about how to solve them.

Contrast with Mastodon, which gets crap for not being a faithful copy of twitter, but their reasoning for not including quote-reblogs is understandable. They're now putting a lot of thought into how to add them safely. Not ignoring functionality users want, but also not ignoring how it will affect culture, that's compromise.

I'd like it if we could talk more about how our platforms work and, particularly, how they affect us, because that's a big way we can build better platforms, right up there with being nice.

the second best thing you can do is to make nsfw posts

Fuck you!

Unless you're a republican or other type of nazi. Then you can absolutely go all the way to hell.

Tolerance got us here.

The last time I went to Reddit, I felt like everyone was trying to pick a fight, and would jump on me for any tiny reason.

No point being part of a community like that, the whole place is a dumpster fire, but if everyone is either trolling or turning on each other, it's much worse.

I hope as Lemmy gets more popular, it doesn't inherit those problems.

I see you around a lot, and you're consistently doing exactly this. I really respect that.

OP simply asks people to be kind, People proceed to tear each other apart..

OP now knows how Jesus felt 🤣

The thing that I appreciated most about Lemmy and my transition from Reddit is how cordial everyone has been. Even if a comment is taken out of context, people tend not to jump down each others throat and assume the worst, or make bad faith arguments full of fallacies. I've had legitimate back and forths with people, something that basically never happens on Reddit.

Kinda wish we could pin this post to the top of everyones feed for a while! 😅 Lemmy has been a great place so far but think we can do even better. Especially with the points you bring up.

Thanks for sharing 😊

I arrived at LEMMY after what I think we very optimistically called the Reddit Collapse. We wish. And I had toe in LEMMY and a few others at Reddit.

Recently with their abusively patronizing redesigning and gamification and just ugly bullshit, I can’t stomach Reddit at all. So LEMMY grows increasingly important, not just to me but to folks who haven’t yet even heard of it.

So, I’ll just say thanks for your post here. I have, I confess, engaged with a couple bullies on LEMMY and I always try to say… I don’t like to do this on LEMMY— and I say that precisely for the reasons you mention.

And as you encourage: I will try to be kinder, even in when feeling… hmm… less than kind.

Hey this is a nice post, I wonder what the comments say :3 click

"Oh you think being kind is good? You're a fascist OP >:T. You can't make me vote republican"

As I get older I have found that making my world smaller and focusing on the things I genuinely care about (and not the things I’m “supposed to” care about as a “good” man/American/worker etc) results in me being happier and more satisfied with life.

Lemmy is my close little corner of the internet. I hope that the fediverse grows ands takes over for the good of other people, but if it stays in this niche for another decade I’ll be happy because I already love it for what it is.

One thing that has been concerning me lately is that the Fediverse is being treated as a refuge for people who get banned on Reddit or other social media. Sure, sometimes those bans are based on arbitrary power tripping nonsense. But people actually do get banned for being assholes, and so I've got some worry that this is distilling the population of the Fediverse in an unfortunate direction.

If this is the best thing you can do, then the second best thing is be active. We're still content starved around here. If you think of something to post, post it. If you can't post, try to comment. Especially on any post that has no comments. Doesn't matter how banal your comment is. Nothing scares away potential new users more than seeing post after post with 0 comments in their feed, and nothing disheartens posters more than that "0 comments" under their post.

People are generally scared or reluctant to do things when nobody else is doing them. They don't want to post in communities that don't already have recent posts. They don't want to comment on posts that have 0 comments. So whenever you can break that silence and be that first post or comment, try to do so.

If I'm in a toxic mood, I go to reddit.

One my favorite ways to summarize this kind of thinking is with the Bill & Ted quote "Be Excellent To Each Other, and Party On Dudes" (mostly the first half applies to this post though). The part that applies to this post, Keanu Reeves said he interprets as follows:

I think that the sentiment of it is really just be the best person, the best human being you can be, and if you do that, then you can party on and live life to the fullest, but you’re gonna be safe... You’re going to be supported, you’re going to get the gift of giving, you’re going to get the gift of receiving, you’re going to get to the gift of sharing. We’re all just some humans on a rock in space, and so it’s kinda nice to kind of promote that idea of ‘give a little, get a lot’, kind of bring it in for a group hug."

Love how the point of the post is “hey try to be nice” and everyone sounding off in the comments like “FUCK YOU AND FUCK THOSE SPECIFIC GUYS TOO”

Maybe more people should just post their reviews of vacuums here

Completely right OP, and this is worth repeating as MUCH as possible. More than almost any UX or intake changes, Fediverse will only grow if their experience of the community is good.

Unfortunately, some people have never caught a vibe in their life and it shows lol. A single person with a bad attitude can completely tank your experience in a small community, versus a 20,000 person subreddit where usernames are basically indistinguishable.

Getting better at communication takes time and practice. Depending on where someone is in that journey, a post like this can make a big difference. And I think we can all use a reminder to be kind every so often. So, thanks for taking the time to write this out

A big problem is too much politics, feels like politics is always brought up even in posts where it's not the topic of discussion. Just look at this post. Then if someone disagrees with your view they'll attack you and then they'll claim they "are on the right side". People have forgotten the golden rule.

This place is becoming very Reddit, if you post anything that deviates from someone’s beliefs they call you names and insult your intelligence. So many people can’t have a debate or discussion without jumping to personal attacks and hate. It’s really disheartening. I love political debate but there’s no such thing anymore, only name calling

Highly upvoted comments like "Elon Musk should commit suicide" or "X group of people are all mentally retarded" or even popular posts themselves make me feel uncomfortable.

It feels toxic like X. Or what Voat (an older Reddit clone, albeit not a federated one) turned into. So much of y'all upvoting posts like that, normalizing it, does not make me want to stick around, as that culture of hate will only get worse.

The thing in this post about curiosity isn't just a lemmy/online thing.

The vast majority of people are mainly interested in themselves. Like - if you have trouble on dates, making friends, getting along at work, anything to do with people in general - approaching them with a sense of sincere curiosity will completely change things overnight.

Get people to talk about themselves, be supportive in your discussions with them, and shut the fuck up wherever possible and suddenly you're interesting, a good person, kind, whatever - traits you've done exactly fuck all to demonstrate, but that people will swear are true because you seem interested in them.

It's fucking bonkers but it's true. Curiosity can change your world.

@Cris_Color@lemmy.world being nice helps establish the "tone", but I'm not sure that wouldn't change with another "API event" on Reddit that results in another, larger mass migration.

Another suggestion I have for college graduates is to ask your alma mater if they are going to start using something other than commercial social to engage with alumni.

Most universities don't want to make mistakes investing in the bleeding edge, but they are quick to follow. When a few schools do something, many more quickly copy that. They are also looking for low cost wins. Their engagement numbers are already telling them that Xwiiter no longer works to reach alumni or potential students.

If even a handful of alumni suggest a change at the right time, that is often enough to get them to give federated social a try.

That is when the less toxic "tone" really helps.